I often hear people say, “My Android battery
life sucks!”
To which I usually reply, “Yeah, unless
you’ve tweaked it, it probably does.”
This article will explore some easy ways for
any Android device user to improve their battery life, using :
MonkeyBiz’s Rules of Android
Battery Conservation
First off, let’s talk reasonable
expectations. No amount of tweaking will make your phone battery last forever.
In fact, barring something extraordinary, your phone will probably top out at
16-20 hours of normal use. With an extended battery, you might hit a full 24.
Consequently, charge your phone every night.
From a purely practical perspective, the
absolute best I advice I can give for improving your Android experience, as it
relates to battery life, is buying a second battery and a charger and leaving
it plugged in. It gives you the option of changing batteries and moving on with
a full charge in under a minute. It’ll cost you a little, but it’s well worth
the investment.
If your device has a non-removable battery,
tough noogies. Shoulda bought a better device.
The Golden Rule: Always have a
second battery on the charger.
Moreover, it doesn’t hurt to have chargers
everywhere. I have one in my car, at my desk at work, at home on my desk, and
at home on my nightstand. Considering most devices use a micro-USB compatible
port, you shouldn’t have a problem finding a few.
The Silver Rule: Have battery
chargers everywhere you go.
Now, the first thing you’re going to want to
do to determine what exactly is draining your phone’s battery life is to go to
the Battery page. Did you know that your phone has a Battery page? I bet you
didn’t. You access it by going to Settings > About Phone > Battery.
Selecting “Battery use” will give you a detailed display of what exactly has
been using your device’s battery.
More likely than not, your biggest power hogs
are going to be your display, cell standby, and Wifi standby.
So, now that we know what’s draining your
juice, let’s talk about how we can stop the bleeding.
The #1 thing, in my experience, that people
fail to do, is properly manage their display brightness. They leave the
brightness cranked up on their screen and wonder why their battery dies in four
hours. I have a toggle widget on my home screen that toggles between 0% (low
light conditions light nighttime and bars), 30% (where I normally keep my
brightness), and 100% (outside on a sunny day). You’ll find that smartly
adjusting your display brightness based on conditions makes for a much improved
battery life.
Another good tip is to check what your screen
timeout is. I typically keep mine set at 30 seconds to a minute. You can adjust
this under Settings > Display. The higher the timeout, the longer it takes
your screen to turn off if you’re not using it.
A quick note on Automatic Brightness: some
people like it, some do not. I feel like it sets my brightness too high by
default and doesn’t adapt well. Your results may vary. It is, strictly
speaking, better than nothing, but not comparable to manual management.
Rule #1: Turn your display
brightness down unless a higher brightness is absolutely necessary.
Mobile data (3G, 4G, 4G LTE) is incredibly
battery intensive compared to WiFi. Simply connecting to WiFi when you’re at
home, work, etc. can extend your battery life significantly. Typically
speaking, I’m on WiFi at home and at work, and on 4G LTE in between, or when
I’m out and about.
Rule #2: Only use mobile data
if WiFi is not available.
I love the fact that we’re finally getting
broadband-class speeds to our mobile phones. I just wish that it didn’t
absolutely thrash the battery in the process.
Every 4G LTE phone on the market today is
running a first generation LTE radio, which is to say it’s not incredibly power
efficient. Consequently, using 4G LTE for an extended period of time will drain
your battery significantly.
So, if you happen to have a 4G LTE device, I
would recommend picking up a toggle widget from the Android Market. I use LTE
OnOff, which opens a settings menu that allows you to change from 4G to 3G.
Worth noting: the next version of
CyanogenMod, CM9, will include an LTE toggle in its built in notification
settings.
Rule #3: 4G is a battery
destroyer.
Do me a quick favor: go to Settings >
Accounts & sync. How many things do you have listed there? 6? 10? Every one
of those items works in the background of your OS, using precious battery life to
send and receive data. Now, some of those things you want to run. For example,
I like having my Google Contacts synced on a regular basis, so that if
something happens to my phone they’re still available. I like getting my Gmail
in a timely fashion. I like getting notifications for Facebook and Twitter.
These are all important things. However, the Stocks and the News apps that are
included on my phone don’t need to sync, because I don’t use them.
If you’re rooted, you can remove some of
these included applications without issue. If not, select the application, then
uncheck everything that’s selected to sync. It’s not a perfect solution, but
it’s better than nothing. Moreover, you can select to only sync certain things.
The choice is yours.
Rule #5: Beware of Accounts
& sync.
So, if you’ve done all of these things, and
your battery is still dying after 8 hours, it’s possible your phone is running
dogshit software. This is not out of the question. With the exception of the
Nexus series, most phones do not run stock Android, and stuff like TouchWiz and
Sense can easily suck your battery to nothing. However, we’re Android users,
and unlike those silly iPhone users, we can do something about this. We can
root our phones and install new software like Cyanogenmod that can
significantly improve the battery life, just by virtue of not being entirely
full of carrier-mandated crap.
And that brings us to our final rule…
The Android Prime Directive:
When in doubt, hack the planet.
If anyone has anything they’d like to add, or
would like some advice, leave a comment!
